As a graduate student in the 1970s, I attended Mass and was involved in activities at St. Paul University Catholic Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For many Catholic students like me, St. Paul’s was a “home away from home” in the spiritual sense. It kept students tethered to their faith amid the challenges of life on campus.
St. Paul’s is the oldest Newman Center established on a secular university in the United States. The first chapel was completed in 1909 on State St. in the heart of the UW campus. Over the years, St. Paul’s has continued to provide Catholic students — who number over 25 percent of the student body by some estimates — with the opportunity for growth in their faith in an increasingly secular culture.